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The Ultimate Weapon – A “Quall’s Feather Token – Tree”You mentioned a Boat token-
I once had a character (mine) accidentally activate a collapsible boat in a 10x10 room. He was nearly crushed to death (-8, I think).
On the subject of using wondrous items to destroy a game creatively:
I'm DMing Tomb of Horrors (3.5 conversion) with 2 of my regular players to kill some time on an off-meet day. I have 8 PCs statted up, with random magic items, and each player takes 2 to start things off.
The rogue sighs, walks over to the lich again, and takes his vial of sovereign glue and jams it in the lich's mouth (melee touch attack) and then crushes the vial by slamming it's jaw shut (grapple check). 1 round later, mouth full of glue, the lich has somatic/material components back, but NO verbal components. From there it was a simple matter of beating it to death.
We still joke about getting feather tokens when we go magic item shopping. And everybody remembers to Take 10 on Use Rope checks.
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Okay, this happened in my campaign todaa. My party gets ambushed by three green dragons. The first two we handle pretty easily, but then the third shows up and growls something about killing her brothers. My ranger looks at her, after making his will save vs. fear and says "I bet you have the most beautiful green eyes when you take human form." The dragon turns to me and says "flattery will get you nowhere, or everywhere, which might be worse." I answered, "well I'm willing to find out if you are." The whole table started busting up for like fifteen minutes. Then after we manage to drive the dragon off, she tries to grapple my ranger, and then tells me she will have to take me up on my offer another time. Now every woman my character meets he will suspect of being a polymorphed green dragon.
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Great stories are in here, I wish I could contribute some half as good but here's what I got:
Back in a 2e campaign a friend was running in FR we were in some hick-town in Calimsham. Our party decides it would be fun to seriously aggravate the local town guard. Unfortunately the town guard had this giant skeleton with flames in the chest (the name eludes me right now) for just such an occasion. We hear some thunderous noises approaching and get this grim description of the beast along with a DM-bone saying "Just run, you can't beat this thing." Our party cleric high-tails it as fast as he can, meanwhile the fighter decides it might be fun to challenge himself against the skeleton and chooses to fight. My character who is somewhat delusional and thinks he's a 1000 man army also decides to stay and fight. The look on the DMs face when we actually managed to squeak out and kill the thing was priceless.
More recently in a homebrew setting we arrived in this forest/druid-esque town filled with darkwood. We went to the tavern to recuperate a bit and ease the pains of our journey. My character, the burly (and not too bright) fighter orders some of the special "darkwood whiskey" and decides he likes it. A lot. He orders a few more, fills his flask up and gets ready to join the others who are prepared to go by now. The party sees me kicking back a few and dread the effects alcohol will have on their only front-liner so the wizard decides to cut me off and takes all the booze from me. My character is so pleased she missed his flask that he pulls it out and starts drinking in front of them. He shakes it at them and says "Come on, you know you want a drink. Share the flask!" The wizard responds "People who share flasks get mummy rot."
Needless to say a good larf ensued and afterward my fighter, who trusts the superior intellect of the wizard, never touched a flask again. In fact I'm pretty sure he put a moratorium on all booze just in case there was some lingering mummy rot or something.
In Korea, I was DMing a group and to make a long story short, my newest player was a young and rather innocent kid who'd just joined the unit. He was playing a 15th level ogrillon barbarian/berserker thing. At the time I pretty much allowed any d20 sourcebooks to be used without regard for balance.
I was trying to run him through a David and Goliath scenario, out of the Tanakh. I had a fire giant fighter challenging this beleaguered army and the king calls his character to save the day. The fact that he did not catch on to the inspiration for the scenario made things go down interestingly.
So, for those who are familiar with the story, King Saul offers David his armor, but it is too big so David refuses it. Well, the king offers the ogrillon his armor, and it is too small. So does he refuse it? Nope. He takes the king's golden suit of plate mail and straps it to his back and starts to walk out. The king is rather stunned, since the DM is also stunned. The guards try to stop the ogrillon who asks for (and makes) a Jump check to hop over them and go for the giant. By this point most of the group is rolling on the floor so I chalk the golden armor up for lost and let him go for the giant.
Well, he sees the giant blaspheming and decides to try an Intimidate check against him. Now, I hadn't paid much attention to his specific character creation process, so I was a little surprised when he rolled and announced his Intimidate check was 78. But in the middle of the game is hardly the best place to go over the character's build with a finetoothed comb, so I ask him to make some sort of intimidation in character. A threat, a glare....you know.
So what does the ogrillon do? In character, he bites off his own tongue and chucks it at the giant. At this point the wizard's player can't even breathe, he's laughing so hard and we had to pause to make sure he didn't hyperventilate. Once we got back to the game, the Intimidate check worked out successfully and the ogrillon managed to kill the giant once he managed to catch up with the creeped out giant who was hightailing it out of there as fast as possible.
That kid provided us with tons of hysterical moments during our tour, but the biting off and throwing of a tongue to justify a totally broken Intimidate check remained the highlight.
POV of my Rogue:
It was the a bustling street, one that I could take advantage of, so, I found the easiest target: a drunk. I snuck up behind him, and cut his coin purse. Of course, I accidently cut his pants, and the drunk falls over. The DM capitalizes on the situtaion, reminding me that the drunk was pulling two large oxen, and when he falls over, the oxen start an angry charge. I was fine, but I caused a couple of casualties, and the rest of the group was left to clean up my mess :)
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We were playing 1st or early 2nd edition with cantrips from the original UA. we were only 1st or 2nd lvl and came across a band of gnolls (3 I think). Well in that edition cantrips were really minor and you could cast a spell and a cantrip in the same round. There was one that let you dissappear behind a screen. It gave you invisibility but only from on side. ( as game flavor my MM looked like a mobile ball of the light spell, same color and brightness etc.) So the rogue hides, the fighter nocks an arrow. I cast the cantrip ( which doesnt go away when you attack) and then fire a MM at the lead gnoll...
Well the fighter was stunned by my action, we hadn't a hope of beating the gnolls. He lost his action. The gnolls were pissed and looking for the attacker...so in the interest of self preservation I cast light on the fighters arrow.And ran like heck.Needless to say he got royally smeared and the next incarnation made my wizards life miserable, but it was well worth it , the rest of the group including the DM laughed for days.
You have to be old (like me) to remember the Lesley Gore song from the 60's called, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to".
Well, I was player at the time, back in the late 80's and the group was doing something real stupid. The DM said, but I don't want to kill you all. Myself and Phil (another guy my age), just looked at each other and started singing, "It's my party and I'll DIE if I want to".
DnD broke early that night. Phil and I just couldn't hold it together after that.
-- david
Papa.DRB
Years ago, my highschool group was in the midst of a serious RP arguement, with one of the players shaking his finger in another's face. It was getting really intense, and then the second player calmly hung a pretzel from the first player's finger.
Needless to say, after 8 hours of gaming, a bunch of high-school boys found that to be the funniest thing they'd ever seen. We were laughing so hard none of us could breathe, and it completely broke the mood. We went from that to more sedate monster bashing.
Funny or stupid? I don't know, but the image has stayed with me for 25 years.
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I don't know if this is funny or stupid, but I just ran my first 4th edition game and ended up with a TPK, using kobold minions! The party had the most horrible rolls I have ever seen, and the kobolds just nickled and dimed them to death. It was horrible, I had the encounter planned as a quick and easy, for the PC's, introduction to 4th edition, and instead it became a slaughter.
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I don't know if this is funny or stupid, but I just ran my first 4th edition game and ended up with a TPK, using kobold minions! The party had the most horrible rolls I have ever seen, and the kobolds just nickled and dimed them to death. It was horrible, I had the encounter planned as a quick and easy, for the PC's, introduction to 4th edition, and instead it became a slaughter.
Hey now, Kobolds run rght are some of the scariest things possible. My players would rather fight almost anything else. They have opted to take on an extended family of hill giants gaurding a canyon rather then go through the Kobold warren underneath at level 5. I think the easiest encounter was CR8.
Incidently, "They graduated magna cum laude from the Sauron Institute for the Criminally Vicious." is one of my favorite gaming related quotes of all time. In our last setting, we actually had that institution. I think I may bring it back...hmmm...
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I don't know if this is funny or stupid, but I just ran my first 4th edition game and ended up with a TPK, using kobold minions! The party had the most horrible rolls I have ever seen, and the kobolds just nickled and dimed them to death. It was horrible, I had the encounter planned as a quick and easy, for the PC's, introduction to 4th edition, and instead it became a slaughter.
Hehe, nicely done.
I just recently put the fear of kobolds back into my 3.5 players. Nothing beats watching a party of 4 2nd level characters get wasted by three kobolds.
I was running a (modified) setting from the Dreaming Cities Tri-Stat book, and throughout the entire campaign my players had been rushing to find an artifact that would save the world. I had played it up as quite an epic thing, and they finally found the artifact in a cave with a glowing pool and it's all dramatic and mysterious, etc, etc.
So they find the artifact in this strange glowing pool and it looks so bizarre they're afraid to touch it. So one of the characters turns to another and says quietly, "Dare you to lick it."
The other character pauses for a moment, then says, "I'll lick it if you lick it first."
So the session that night ended with the first character slowly picking up the artifact and bringing it closer to his mouth as his tongue extends to lick it.
And then I found five dollars.
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I don't know if this is funny or stupid, but I just ran my first 4th edition game and ended up with a TPK, using kobold minions! The party had the most horrible rolls I have ever seen, and the kobolds just nickled and dimed them to death. It was horrible, I had the encounter planned as a quick and easy, for the PC's, introduction to 4th edition, and instead it became a slaughter.
Amongst my group of regulars kobolds are feared more than any other beast contained in the MM. In fact we fear them so much that we call them "party killers", they have indeed wiped out many a party of ours.
Fear the kobold!
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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I was playing through a Goodman Games module with my son. His character could read goblin. He came across a chest with a vial in it. I described the label 'Not poison. Nope, no poison here.' He drank it. He was so shocked when he had to roll a fortitude save (he made it). He couldn't believe that the goblins would lie. ;-) Kids are cute. ... and easily fooled.
Back in the early days of my role-playing career, a good 25 years ago, I was playing a dwarf with a magical hammer and a love for strong drink. In one adventure, while working over his fifth or sixth jug of ale under the table, a death knight appeared in the midst of our party and began a battle no one wanted. As the thief and the wizard fought the enemy, the dwarf was making percentile rolls--01-50 meant I attacked; 51-00 meant I took another drink. I did score a couple lucky hits, but it was usually my hammer on the death knight's foot. Despite that, we actually won.
When I started playing DnD, the very first game the DM ran was City of the Spider Queen. Only one of the group had ever played DnD before, but the DM was very experienced.
Spoilers for those who want to go into the dungeon as unsupectingly as we did.
Party: "Wizard, what does that glowing symbol do?"
Wizard: (rolls a 1) "Its harmless. Go right ahead!"
Druid smashes door. Symbol of slaying activates. Party is splattered in gently steaming chunks of Druid.
The party very quickly learned not to trust the wizard's advice on any situation. I couldn't roll more than a 5 on knowledge checks, for some reason...
So later we had decided that the Archmage was a wuss, and that we should kill him and take his stuff. This was mainly argued for by my Wizard, again, because I had just learned Antimagic Shell and thought that this would make us invulnerable. One Prismatic Wall later, cast on 3 party members as they climbed a sheer wall, convinced me I was wrong. Oddly enough my wizard survived that one... Although hopelessly insane.
So the last 3 party members faced off the Archmage, now without caster support. The Cleric of Tempus prays for divine help, and gets back a message telling him to prove himself first. He decides that this isn't condusive to his continued existence, and spontaneously converts to Shar. (much to the DM's amusement)
Cleric: "Shar! I will give you my soul if you help me defeat this foe!"
Shar: "I already have your soul."
Cleric: "I'll give you HIS soul!" (pointing at the elven fighter)
Shar: "Deal!"
And so for months afterward we decided to bring an elf who we could sacrifice if we got into trouble.
Finally we encountered the Shadow Dragon, who started predictably kicking our asses. The Dragon grapples the Cleric in its mouth, and everyone else sprints away down the (too small for dragon) passage. The Cleric remembers he has a Wish (from a deck of many things earlier)
Cleric: "I wish I was with the rest of the party!"
DM, with a wicked grin: "Really..."
Everyone else: "Oh noooo..."
The Dragon came with. Plugging the passage ahead of us, still grappling the Cleric...
That ended badly.
The single best quote, which was in no way preplanned:
Cleric, to the barbarian: "So why do you do what you do?"
Barbarian: "Uhh.. I just kill for the experience."
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I don't know if this is funny or stupid, but I just ran my first 4th edition game and ended up with a TPK, using kobold minions! The party had the most horrible rolls I have ever seen, and the kobolds just nickled and dimed them to death. It was horrible, I had the encounter planned as a quick and easy, for the PC's, introduction to 4th edition, and instead it became a slaughter.Amongst my group of regulars kobolds are feared more than any other beast contained in the MM. In fact we fear them so much that we call them "party killers", they have indeed wiped out many a party of ours.
Fear the kobold!
A lot of folks have commented similarly, and to be honest, it wasn't that fact that kobolds killed the party, thay can be tough buggers if used right, it was the fact that they were wiped out by five 1hp minions. That was the shocker.
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Cleric: "Shar! I will give you my soul if you help me defeat this foe!"
Shar: "I already have your soul."
Cleric: "I'll give you HIS soul!" (pointing at the elven fighter)
Shar: "Deal!"
Awesome! I have actually had the party cleric try this too. it didn't work though, so that was the moment that the cleric dicovered atheism. which was really odd. all of a sudden he had a scientific reason why he could perform miracles. lotsa fun.
Armour, I like the barbarian :)
Here's a good one, we were playing in a Dragonlance campaign, and at one point we were attacked by a large group of draconians, draconians wielding falchions. A Large enough group that they were able to have attackers on every member of the party, unfortunately. Our wizard got hit with a critical, and the DM pulls out the critical hit deck, and here's where the story goes wrong. The wizard says "I'm at full hit points, I don't think he can kill me." The rest of us, know that now, he has to die. Lo and behold DM pulls the Decapitation card. Bye bye, wizard.
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Just finished up 2 very long term games, so many quotes I couldn't possibly remember them all.
One very funny thing, at least for me: The party is now level 15 and 16, with the 2 Clerics as Afflicted Werebears, and the Wizard a Natural Werebear. So, CR a whole freaking lot.
On the approach to the Sunken Queen, they encountered several Magebred, Horrid, Titanic Toads. CR 16 if I recall correctly. Another player, sometime DM, is quite adept at reading the situation and general encounter design. He knows whats coming from the swamp map, the 4" squares of color in my hands, and the overall party configuration.
"Don't tell me, we're gonna be fighting like 5 titanic toads?"
I couldn't say a word, just shook my head and held up 6 fingers, slowly dying with laughter. Stupid wizard (a Diviner) had the same luck it seemed.
During the Savage Tide, the Ranger's cohort, a Conjurer, was crazy inventive and a general all around PITA to DM for. At one point, he decided that "Energy Transformation Field" was the neatest thing since sliced bread. For those of you unfamiliar with the spell, it allows you to tie a lower level spell into the 7th or 8th lvl Field spell. From now on (duration permanent) ANY spell or spell like ability would instead trigger the tied in spell.
Now, in the STAP, you fight a lot of demons, many of whom have spell like abilities. If only for Teleport at will, that's a whole lot of power to abuse, if they don't know its there.
At one point, they had a very high CR succubus in a grapple with the crazy grapplin' Drunken Master. In an Energy Transformation Field. Near the River Styx. The poor critter tried to energy drain the monk grappling her, triggering like 7 or 8 Ray of Deanimation spells (does damage to constructs only). She tried to port away, to no avail.
They then dosed her with the River Styx, negating the memory of what just happened, so she came to and tried to energy drain and teleport the very next turn. This was a boss-monster, and they negated her every action with 2 spells from the NPC Wizard.
Several times now players have had their PCs repeatedly suicide and reincarnate. Both times I can recall they were looking to get back to their original forms, so I let them slide on the inevitables for now. I think the funniest was the Paladin who came back as a halfling 3 times in a row. The druid had to do some fast talking to explain the corpses to the on-duty watchmen, especially the Small female one with her throat slashed....
-t
TPK involving ONE octopus:
I was DM, 1st lv game v3.5.
Set scene: after long overland moving, party comes to a river and can see a town in the distance. Party follows river towards town. One rule nazi type player decides we marched overland for x ammount distance. We need to drink.
OK, now I'm not one to argue with rule nazi's, (my being one also), I told the party that the river looked fresh and inviting with all manner of wildlife living around it.
"What animals do we see?"
And I listed marine animals from the back of the Monster Manual trying hard to display a traquil scene.
And then I made the mistake of saying ..."and you see an octopus."
This put the party into a yelling frenzy to this day I don't know why.
Rouge: "I rush into the water to kill it!" and promptly slips in the mossy rocks, fails Fort and slips into the water unconcious.
Octopus: squirt ink and prepares to move away from loud splash.
Fighter: "I rush into the ink cloud!"
Octopus grapples.
The following begins one by one TPK.
Fighter: "I run up onto the bank so i can see the octopus and hit it with my axe". Octopus firmly attached to his leg, he swings with all his might, critical miss, cleaves off own leg and hits neg levels.
Cleric: "I rush in to help the fighter, but first I want to remove the "threat". Attempts to kick the animal into the water again. He sucessfully kicks the octopus, which lands right where the wizard is, dragging out the rouge.
Wizard: "Ahh! Flying octopus!" and is attacked due to the octopus now being angry.
Octopus: Sucessful hit, drops wizard to neg levels. Wizard slips into the water.
Cleric: "I'm going to KILL the crap outta that Octopus!", charges, swings his mace at the water and splashes himself in the face, and gets water and ink in his eyes. "Ahh! Can't see!"
Cleric then attempts to stumble up to the bank, trips on the wizard's dying form hits his head on the same rock that took down the Rouge.
Moral: Don't screw with octopi and just have a damned drink!
My first PnP D&D campaign ever had this lovely tidbit on our second session, one that we relentlessly tease the player in question with to this day five years later.
Post-apocalyptic world, the gods are dead. Three travelers - my half-elf Hexblade, a human Swashbuckler, and a "new human" (halfling-like custom race) Ranger - end up getting involved in the slave trade going on in this city, and for some reason (to free them I think) decide to steal something from one of the Mage Lords who run the city we're in. (It's been a while.) After some investigation we determine that the best way into this guy's tower is through the ancient tunnels beneath the city, which should have an opening into his tower's base.
We find the tunnels, but they're full of zombies. We're level one, zombies don't give a flip about curses or critical hits and they're not the Ranger's favored foe, so we end up fleeing the heck away from them. We eventually stumble onto the underground portion of the tower we were looking for, but it's separated from us by a two-hundred-foot chasm. My character, luckily, has a heavy crossbow, metal pitons and a hammer, lots of rope, and a grappling hook; some lucky rolls later we have a rope stretching across this gap, caught by the hook on one of the tower's balconies (don't ask me why a Mage Lord of a post-apocalyptic city has balconies on the underground portion of his tower) and securely fastened into the ground on our side. The Ranger and I shimmy across safely.
Just then the zombies finally start to catch up. The Swash, instead of hurrying to join us - he had the Balance and Climb for it I'm sure, which makes his next action all the crazier - decides instead to cut the rope and jump, swinging while gripping the rope. After getting confirmation TWICE at the DM's request, his character was declared dead; this erupted into an hour-long derailment between him insisting that his character could have "made his tumble checks" to negate the falling damage from slamming into the tower's base at the low point of his arc, and the DM and the Ranger's player (my sister-in-law, who's a MATH MAJOR) pointing out that not only could he not guarantee the success of those rolls, but failing just one would kill him anyway.
It finally took the Ranger's player sitting him down and triangulating his course to calculate his falling speed to convince him that yes, there was no way he was going to survive.
The episode has since been dubbed The "GerooooooooooooonimoooooooooOhCrap*SPLAT*" Event and will forever live in infamy.
A very long time ago now, in a campaign I was DMing, the players were shipwrecked on a primitive continent.
At one point soon after they arrive they are attacked by natives, who shoot flaming arrows at them.
They decide to build a fortified encampment, though wood is the only available material. One player, who was not known for this sort of thing, decides he will be the one to design the fort.
About an hour later he shows the rest of us the design he's come up with. I am looking at it, thinking something is wrong.... and then it hits me: all of the (small) buildings for living quarters and food/water storage are on the outside of the fortified wall, not the inside.
The other players and I ask him why he had done that, and his response was that he didn't want to be trapped inside the fortified walls in the midst of a bunch of burning buildings, and felt they could run outside real fast during a siege to grab food and water. After much insistence on his part and head scratching on ours, the fortress was built to his specifications.
Funny thing is, it sort of worked out the way he expected. The natives attacked again, the buildings burned, but the PCs inside the walls didn't suffer too badly. They weren't so lucky with the food and water though (the natives stole it before they burned everything else).
Even so, the fortress was rebuilt with the important buildings on the inside of the walls.
Once my players were lowering the party's rogue down a sinkhole when a giant spider appeared. Every member of the party turned and attacked the thing, completely forgetting the poor rogue hanging halfway down the sinkhole... With no one holding the rope, his descent went faster than he planned.
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We had a group of 6th level characters, and has just finished a mini-arc and the DM was giving us some options on what we could do next. He mentioned a demi-lich nearby and the party looks at each other and says "Demi-lich, so that means it is less than a lich, let's do it". One TPK against the 25CR monster.
Needless to say, this quote lives on...
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The party meets a tiefling prostitute (Lavender Lil, to be precise) and bargains with her for information. She is attracted to one of the party members (a Binder with high CHA), so she makes a proposal:
"50gp and one night with the handsome fellow."
All giddy, the Binder PC turns to his companions and says:
"All right guys, it's 10gp per person and I'll be back tomorrow morning !"
The rest of the party isn't really thrilled:
"You pay the money, we're not getting laid after all !"
The Binder says "No no. The information is for everybody, so you all pay up."
A halfling Beguiler however had none of this and says to Lil:
"You know what ? I'll pay you 100gp for the info, if you won't go to bed with him"
Grudgingly, the Binder cashes out 50gp and wakes up the next night tied up in the bed, with no coin purse. Priceless !
Ok, not a lot of D&D stories, but you should like these from other systems I ran.
Champions
Had a player make a character based on Shane Gooseman from the old Galaxy Rangers cartoon. He could take on any defense needed, and he could also activate a few other powers, like wings, or water breathing, etc.
The PC's are flying into an area to assault a Villains base, the walls are 40 feet thick reinforced concrete. Reinforced with what you ask? Tank armor and steel girders.
The brick, as they are flying in on the Gadgeteer's open top flying car asks the Gooseman character 'You can fly right?'
The player nods. "Yeah, I can..." Upon which the brick player rolls some dice. "I throw him as hard as I can toward the building, so he can scout out the defenses."
The Gooseman character goes flying toward the building with all the strength a Superman type can put into the throw, trailing a faint 'Buuuttttt nnnnoottttt innnnn thhhhiisssss fooooorrrmmmmm!!!!!!'.
He hit the building so hard (speed of vehicle, which was 200 mph, and then the extra 300 mph from the brick) that he went through the first wall, through the enterior (killing several dozen minions with shrapnel) and then through the second wall. He stopped about 50 feet on the other side, broken, bleeding, and within a few body of being dead. He'd taken about 500 times the amount of stun required to knock him out when the GM quit rolling.
To this day, in games that have no-one who was in that game, it's a running joke, whenever someone asks 'Can you <blah>' they respond with 'Not in this form!'.
Another game, different players, the group had been in a very very hard fight, several people almost died, and they were fighting their own team mate who'd gone crazy. A teleporter, and he'd been teleporting peoples bones out of their bodies, amongst various other organs. The brick of the group had regeneration, and had lost a femur, his liver, one kidney, and 10 feet of intestine to the teleporter at various points during the fight.
When it was done, they had the team mate unconscious, but no way to keep him unconscious until they could get him back to base and fix his brain. The brick was the only one still capable of movement, so he skipped down the mountainside swinging his teammate by the ankles, slamming him head first into every tree and stone along the way singing 'Tra-la-la la-la'.
Shadowrun
Had a player who was playing a Troll. The troll carried a big shotgun he called Bertha. They were defending an old rundown gas station that was the secret hideout of one of the players (they were hiding someone from a gang that wanted them dead). So, they are in the old gas station when the gang starts a frontal assault, firing through the front of the building, casting spells, makign lots of noise.
The Troll sees all the stuff going on in front, and punches a hole in the back wall to look out. He sees two orcs tossing a human over the back fence, sneaking up on them from behind.
The troll screams "PULLL!!" as the human reaches the top of the arc over the electrified fence and unloads into the human. Rolls nothing but sixes, lots of them. Blows the human in half and rains the bits down on the two Orcs, who both scream and run away in terror.
A different player, also playing a troll, was waiting outside the fence leading to a Renraku ultra-violet research facility. They'd already confirmed the fence was electric. So, he picks up his 10 foot battle axe, the one that weighs 20 lbs with just the head, not to mention the steel shaft. He attacks the fence with it, slicing it from top to bottom and burying the axe blade 10 inches in the ground.
Unfortunately for him, the fence was designed as a 'variable voltage' fence. So it had 100 volts and 2,000amps normally. When it detected someone cutting it, it ramped up based on how much damage had been done to any one section. It topped out at 50,000 volts and 100,000 amps about 2/3rds of the way through. Needless to say, the metal head and shaft of his battle axe was a perfect conductor, and the voltage shorted through his leather gloves, through him, and into the ground. Did enough damage in one hit to kill him 20 times over and left him a smoking briquette on the ground.
Everyone was laughing so hard they were tearing up, until someone pointed out that they couldn't even sell his cyberware to make a profit on the blown job.
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Shards of Eberron Trilogy
This was a bonus encounter I cooked up so there's no need to spoiler warning this one...
After the first adventure (Crypt of the Crimson Stars), the PCs (Pathfinder Beta Characters) were on their way back to Sharn, celebrating with champagne. They had just retrieved the McGuffin from the very exciting dungeon. They began to hear the flapping of immense wings and before they knew it Trapper Dundee (the shifter ranger) was snatched by a large red dragon. As the dragon flapped away with the ranger on his turn her said: "I tie myself to the dragon."
Me (GM): "Um, why?"
Trapper: "That's not important right now, can I do it?"
Me: "I suppose so, make a CMB check."
Trapper *success*
Me: "Okay you've tied yourself to a large red dragon."
*meanwhile the party is buffing itself, casting flight and air walk on themselves and their flying attack tigers*
Trapper: "Okay now I have the dragon just where I want it, I full attack its legs"
Me: "You'll have to make a CMB check to free your arms from its grasp."
Trapper: *rolls high*
Red Dragon: *rolls low*
Me: Okay your arms are free, make your attack.
Trapper: *rolls well, deals copious amounts of damage due to favoured enemy Dragon*
Me: "The red dragon's claws are slashed to ribbons and it drops you, you begin falling-"
Trapper: "Five feet."
Me: "lolwut?"
Trapper: "I tied myself to the dragon. He's not getting away from me!"
Me: *facepalm*
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More recently I've been running 2 groups through the Curse of the Crimson Throne. My second group are ingenious when it comes to unusual plans, possibly because Trapper's Player is in that group. Playing a Tiefling wizard. If you're playing Curse of the Crimson Throne then spoilers ahoy:
"I put a tangle foot bag in its mouth."
Me (GM): Okay, that provokes an AoO.
Tiefling: I'm on full HP, bring it.
Me (GM): *rolls full damage* 7
Tiefling: "I'm still kickin' and my sister will heal me up in a bit. For now though, I still get my attack right?"
Me (GM): "Yes."
Tiefling: *rolls high*
Me (GM): "Okay, you shove the tanglefoot bag in its mouth, and it bites down hard on your hand, you let go just in time for the tanglefoot bag to explode in the shark's mouth. It can no longer make bite attacks."
Shoanti Barbarian: "This is good! Grum pushes the Shark onto the nearby dock." *High CMB check for Bullrush*
Me (GM): "You push the shark onto the dock, and it thrashes about wildly before dying."
Tiefling: "Tanglefoot bag, works just as good for mouths!"
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I can't resist. I don't get to play very often, but the reasons are probably below.
My GM wanted to try his hand at running Age of Worms, I knew it was a tough campaign, but was really excited about playing a Green Ronin Psychic (a halfling with a gas-mask, almost mini-psycho mantis mixed with Mentac the mind-taker!). Anyway I had the Pyrokineticist feat and we had to go to Filge's observatory.
Spoilers ahead for AoW:
"Don't look at me! I always know better than to build my dungeons out of kindling when YOU play."
Suffice to say he refused to continue running the Age of Worms until he gained more GMing experience. He also banned the GR Psychic from the game, somehow playing a sorcerer with mage hand and burning hands just doesn't feel the same.
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Three moments spring to mind. The first was when I was DMing the WoTC adventure with the headless horseman (standing stones I think) – well the players had just found out that one of the villagers was the insidious villain of the piece and so returned to confront him. They arrived to find the villagers assembled and their evil nemesis among them. With little hesitation the party monk strode forward , pointed his finger and proclaimed “ Oy we hears you is evil”. The villain, ever quick on his feet,look confused, smiled and said with confidence “No, I fear you are mistaken”. Well the player was rocked – his jaw dropped and he opened and closed his mouth like a fish before looking me in the eye and saying “He wasn’t supposed to say that!”
The second was when we played with a newby to the game – a brilliant role player who chose a chain wielding bard as his first ever character. It was while being shadowed by villains on a small country road – the party felt they could slip off the cart and stealthily prepare an ambush for the villains following them. The rogue ducked of to the side under cover of a large tree, the bard dropped off the BACK of the cart and LAY IN THE CENTRE OF THE ROAD? When I asked what else he had planned he responded in an earnest fashion “I’m going to lay here until they pass by, and then leap up and confront them”. Needless the whole table stopped and looked at him strangely…
Finally was a situation that sums out the play “style” of one of our groups regulars. Confronted by Half-illithid beholders the wizard sought to outwit the beasts by sliding beneath one of them and attempting to disintegrate the orb from below, to avoid it antimagic gaze. He was completely surprised when the beholder slowly rotated its head, pointed its now downward facing eyestalks at him and blasted him to nothingness…who’d guess.
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My favorte stories are from our Against the Giants Campaign. Here's one:
We were returning to the Hill Giant Steading, which we had captured, through the wilderness from...somewhere. Not entirely sure where. Anyways, it was getting late in game, and as we traveled along the road, we ran into a group of elves (we did, by the way, have a lot of elven refugees at our Steading). Knowing that all elves are good and noble, we immediately made friends with them. When we we asked what their names were, the GM says, "Well, we've got Harry, Mary, Carrie, Larry, Jerry, Barry..." pointing at the miniatures. You'd think we would have gotten the hint, but sadly, no. We let them keep watch while we rested. We woke the next morning with rakshasas standing over each of us, blades at our throats. I do think we all survived, even the bard, who at a different point wandered off under a confusion spell and was crushed by an iron golem.
Ever since then, whenever we ask the names of what clearly appears to be a random encounter, we all chime in: "Harry, Mary, Carrie, Larry..."
Trapper: "I tied myself to the dragon. He's not getting away from me!"
That's about on par with yet another story from the Swash's player from my previous post... which can be summed up in the phrase "What? It's a green dragon. C'mon, We Can Take 'Em!"
A Player from my group was at a Con, it was in the age of second edition, his character opened a door in some dungeon, the DM looked into his papers , rolled some dice behind the screen, looked into his papers and then politely asked the player to:
"Please roll 23 saves against disintegration"
that sentence is almost a proverb in our group now, and by the way, he made the save 23 times !
Again second edition age:
A legendary dwarven fighter, one of the strongest second edition characters I have seen, he single-handedly killed beholders and dragons.
He was 11th level I think.
We where fighting a lich. The lich casts a phantasmal killer at the dwarf, almost undefeatable, the dwarf could not kill it but the killer could not hit the -9 AC of the dwarf. The Lich casts a summon monster, the randomly selected monster was: a giant sea urchin. The sea urchin needs a nat 20 to hit the dwarf > rolls a nat.20 stinging the dwarf, the only chance to fail his save against the paralyzing poison of the sea urchin was a Nat.1 > guess what happens.
The Dwarf is paralyzed and now much easier to hit, the Phantasmal killer hits > Dwarf dead
23 saves v disintergration! Too funny!
A lot of these are funny. I sure wish *I* had a funny story to contribute. Ah well, I'll have to be content with commenting.
We had a group of 6th level characters, and has just finished a mini-arc and the DM was giving us some options on what we could do next. He mentioned a demi-lich nearby and the party looks at each other and says "Demi-lich, so that means it is less than a lich, let's do it". One TPK against the 25CR monster.
A lich could, of course, have any number of levels. So even if a demi-lich WERE less powerful than a lich, than that, too, could have an indefinite number of levels, if you don't know what one is.
And the idea of judging ANYTHING by its name doesn't sound like such a good idea. Maybe I should create a monster called a patheticweakling...
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Sometimes you get the opposite - the players know exactly what they will be getting but do it anyway.
In our first Ravenloft campaign, the realm was rules by co-denizens, a lich and a small innocent boy (they may even have been the same person, we never found out).
At some points, they were both directly involved with the party. The boy showed up like a ghost, giving us hints and help. The lich followed us around like an NPC, only helping when we really messed up. Nevertheless we found him incredibly meddling, annoying and arrogant.
Anyway, this ancient decaying black dragon tells us the key to escape is in this old wizard tower, so we spend an adventure getting to the top.
As my rogue is about to open the door at the top of the tower, I turn back to the party. "I swear to all the dark powers, if that stupid lich is on the other side of this door I'm going to charge." After a bit of discussion we all agreed that would be a good way to vent our frustration.
I open the door. The DM stops for a second.
DM: "You do realize what you're about to do?"
Me: "You're telling me he's actually there?"
DM: "Yes, he..."
Me: "I charge."
That was pretty much the end of the campaign right there, but we made our own beds.
This one's for Sebastian.
I'm running a (mostly-evil) Darklight Sisterhood Pathfinder game for all of my female friends, including my wife(I believe this is my third iteration of my all-female game- it can happen, folks!) They have recently escaped a quarantine in Greydirge, which is suffering from a plague that seems to affect only the undead(and will begin to compromise Geb's economy as a result), and are on their way to the Axan Wood to investigate an adventure site before those meddling Pathfinders do. A random encounter results in the party(at least, those party members who are awake) facing a shadow hound. Fortunately, it’s alone, so the party has a good chance of defeating it. Unfortunately, I forgot that not only is the party evil, many members of the party are hardcore fans of Pokemon(sigh), so the idea of capturing the beast as opposed to dispatching it is considered and accepted. The party’s cleric decides to cast summon monster to aid her in this(Pikachu, I choose you!), and summons a fiendish pony. However, at this point in time the shadow hound is proving to be more trouble than it may be worth, so they send the poor pony into combat as a distraction. This starts the joke that the pony should not just be a fiendish pony, but a fiendish cinnamon-butter pony that will enter combat with the order of “lie down and be delicious!” Unfortunately the shadow hound is more interested in causing mayhem than eating at the moment and so turns it’s back on the pony.
Apparently, you don’t turn your back on El Guapo.
The cleric orders the pony to attack, not only flanking the beast, but rolling a natural 20 on the attack roll. We are playing with the critical hit deck, so the shadow beast had to roll a Fort Save or be confused. I would be confused if a delicious smelling prey animal reared up and cracked me across the face too. The combat ends with the shadow beast being knocked out cold, and the cleric’s god being duly impressed- he will keep the pony for her in his realm and it will be summoned whenever she wishes up to her Wisdom modifier times a day(a modification of the mount spell). The shadow beast will also be sacrificed next game to the player’s god and kept in reserve until she can cast the summon monster spell of adequate level to summon the creature.
She wants to name the pony Rapidash. *sigh*
Sometimes you get the opposite - the players know exactly what they will be getting but do it anyway.
<snip>
Me: "I charge."
That was pretty much the end of the campaign right there, but we made our own beds.
Okay, I may not have a FUNNY story, but I think I can qualify for the "stupidest" part, if heading for a battle in which the odds are against you qualifies as "stupid."
When I first tried to learn 3.0, I was insecure about my ability to DM it. For the first time in my life (the first time of many, as it turned out), I was converting a 2nd Edition adventure, and all of the monsters in it, to 3.0, because I had not yet discovered ENWorld's conversions. When I saw one encounter with two shadows, my only thought was "Great! A monster I don't have to convert!" It didn't even occur to me to note that 3E shadows were far deadlier than 2E ones. I didn't even bother to glance at the CR! That's right; I'M the "stupid" person in this story!
All I could think was "Are my conversions any good? Would they actually work in play?" So before I ran the adventure for real, I took four PCs of my own, and ran them through it all by myself, playing it solo.
My monster conversions, as it turned out, were fine. The shadows were a different story. They came out of a wall, attacked my elf sorceress, and drained all her strength before anyone could blink. They then went for the rest of the party, which vainly tried to fight off the shadows, the cleric unsuccessfully trying to turn them. The shadows drained a few strength points from the main fighter of the group (actually a barbarian) and the elf sorceress PC rose up as a shadow, when I got a lucky die roll and the cleric managed to turn them, giving the party time to run away.
Now what? Should my party just go back to town, several days away, and recruit a replacement for the sorceress? It just didn't seem right. She wasn't dead, exactly. Think of all the vampire stories where killing a vampire emancipates its spawn. Maybe shadows could work that way? The rulebooks didn't say. And if there was ANY chance of freeing her, surely I just had to take it!
Talk about stupid! I was sending the whole party on a suicide mission! And even while my barbarian was drained of much of his strength! I was actually, mentally, planning what my next party would be like, after the inevitable TPK. Even in the unlikely event that the party wasn't killed, they had no way of distinguishing their former comrade from the other shadows! I was going to roll randomly to decide which shadow each PC would attack, to compensate for my "DM omniscience." No way was this mission going to succeed!
As you've undoubtedly guessed, it DID succeed. Beautifully. I got a slew of unbelievably lucky die rolls, and the party finished off the right two shadows, only wounding the sorceress. That's one of the great things about RPG's, as opposed to written stories: The odds are real, and yet occasionally, you still get lucky.
But even if the sorceress was alive, would she ever be the same again? Had she been a rogue, I would have put her on the path to becoming a shadowdancer. It's funny. When I first read about the prestige classes, I hated them all, except assassins, and I especially hated the shadowdancer. I kept thinking "But what IS a shadowdancer? How do you become one?" Now I had an answer! Much later, in a REAL, non-solo campaign, I created a shadowdancer character with just that background story!
2nd edition, Planescape:
I don't recall the name of the adventure, but it involved striking a base built in the shell of a giant space-faring turtle, filled to the gills with goblinoids and "scro" ("orcs" backwards. Apparently they are what happens when you give orcs higher intelligence and tactical ability. I always thought you called them "hobgoblins." *shrug* Anyway...) High level party.
We were low on hit points, nearly out of spells, had crushed the command center of the place, but managed to alert the base to our presence. In an act of desperation, my wizard used a wish to put us on the deck of our spelljammer and out of the main bay, headed away from the base.
Did I mention that our DM hated wishes? He would pervert any wish you made, no matter how selfless or well-worded.
So *poof* we appear on deck and underway, just as wished for...except we're all stark naked. We'd been teleported out sans any equipment (or clothes, apparently.)
The new guy, playing an elven fighter/wizard and eager to prove his ability as a player, decides to jump off the stern of the ship and float back ahead of us, naked and armed with a spare longsword he grabbed from a crewman. The rest of us are busy reequipping from the stores on board ship, and dressing. We're (mostly) civilized adventurers.
He casts invisibility on the way over, gets in, and reaches an area where the doors to the place we last were are located. He's on an upper platform, looking down. The door is guarded by this creature that looks humanoid, but can shapeshift into a multi-armed insectoid that can kill four ogres in a melee round (we witnessed this earlier and decided it would be best to avoid fighting them if at all possible.) So now he's stuck. He knows they can detect him, even invisible, and is stumped on how to proceed. The rest of us are pissed because he's gone off showboating without the rest of us. There are numerous Spelljammer setting creatures and goblinoids milling around up there with him. So I say, facetiously, "Drop a giff on him."
Which is exactly what he did. He lured a giff (big blue hippo-people for those not familiar with Spelljammer) over to the edge of the platform, then shoved him off. He turns visible (still naked) due to his offensive action. The bug-guy down below has plenty of time with his quick reflexes to move out of the way because the giff is screaming all the way down. The rest of us get to rescue him later when we run into him getting shredded by the bug-guy after being chased into a dead end.
To this day, we'll still throw out "Drop a giff on him." when someone stumped with how to proceed.
This starts the joke that the pony should not just be a fiendish pony, but a fiendish cinnamon-butter pony that will enter combat with the order of “lie down and be delicious!”
Congratulations, you just broke my wife. I was reading this with my back to her. She was drinking coffee. Thankfully she made her save vs 'snort coffee from nose'.
We both laughed so hard, and I'm STILL laughing.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Ok, so I have a couple of contributions to this list. I owe my entire revitalized interest in D&D (and therefore PFRPG) on my Beloved Spouse (Kobold chorus: "We love you!")
That said, on with the show.
Story #1) Background is as follows: Dwarven Paladin of Moradin's warhorse = Willamette. (ie Pretty Smart Horse) Half-orc Rogue/Ranger's animal friendship'ed horse = Noodles. (ie Box-of-Rocks Horse)
During the game, we'd been RP'ing the conversation between these two. At one point, it became rather scatalogical. (Noodles looking at Willamette during a pause and intoning in a uniquely RP'ed voice "I just took a crap" was one such moment)
Well, to make this already long story short, the main character is off-screen and so we cut to the horses. The love of my life, in true lovey fashion, looks up at me and pulls the "Noodles voice" and intones "It had hay in it..."
And I just could. not. stop. laughing. To this day, that quote still reduces me to giggles.
Story #2) Average party level 4 party, comprised of T, the human fighter; Deuteri, the Dwarven Cleric of Moradin; Hauruck, the Half-orc Barbarian; and Sister Dawntouched, the Aasimar Paladin of Bahamut.
We're entering the Caves of Chaos (Keep on the Borderlands) and there's one that is OBVIOUSLY A TRAP, complete with a sign outside that basically reads "Come on in and we'll feed you and love you forever!" So we move to a different cave. Hauruck moves forward, with T and Dawn behind and Deuteri pulling rear guard. "Make a reflex save for Hauruck" my beloved says to me. Barbarians + natural 1 on the reflex save = Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin in a Kobold pit trap. This being Kobolds, it's a self-sealing pit trap of course.
At the same time, the ambush party of Kobolds drops down behind Deuteri and engage her in melee, thus distracting her from the rest of the party.
Long story short, Kobolds dump flaming pitch into the pit, T catches fire. Dawn dives in to save T, just as T's inventory of flaming oil goes up. Multiple Lay on Hands later, they finally come out alive. Just in time for Hauruck to natural 1 in a massive Greatsword swing and tags T again, dropping her to negatives.
They finally do triumph, but ever since then Kobolds and fire are both particularly traumatic for poor T. Of course, this is shortly after she and a Halfling were reincarnated. She rolled "Human" while the Halfling rolled "Special" and came back as a... wait for it... Kobold.
So, those are the two stories I've time for right now. I hope they amuse y'all as much as they did us.
Average party level 4 party, comprised of T, the human fighter; Deuteri, the Dwarven Cleric of Moradin; Hauruck, the Half-orc Barbarian; and Sister Dawntouched, the Aasimar Paladin of Bahamut.
We're entering the Caves of Chaos (Keep on the Borderlands) and there's one that is OBVIOUSLY A TRAP, complete with a sign outside that basically reads "Come on in and we'll feed you and love you forever!" So we move to a different cave. Hauruck moves forward, with T and Dawn behind and Deuteri pulling rear guard. "Make a reflex save for Hauruck" my beloved says to me. Barbarians + natural 1 on the reflex save = Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin in a Kobold pit trap. This being Kobolds, it's a self-sealing pit trap of course.
At the same time, the ambush party of Kobolds drops down behind Deuteri and engage her in melee, thus distracting her from the rest of the party.
Long story short, Kobolds dump flaming pitch into the pit, T catches fire. Dawn dives in to save T, just as T's inventory of flaming oil goes up. Multiple Lay on Hands later, they finally come out alive. Just in time for Hauruck to natural 1 in a massive Greatsword swing and tags T again, dropping her to negatives.
They finally do triumph, but ever since then Kobolds and fire are both particularly traumatic for poor T. Of course, this is shortly after she and a Halfling were reincarnated. She rolled "Human" while the Halfling rolled "Special" and came back as a... wait for it... Kobold.
Mikhaila Burnett, at first glance, your story reminded me of the first post in this thread, which I found fascinating.
So I read through your story again, and... I'm a little puzzled. What did this halfling-turned-kobold have to do with the campaign? Was she one of the PCs? If so, I guess she was gone by the time the kobolds-with-flaming-pitch story took place, because you don't mention the halfling in the lineup at the beginning of your story. But if the halfling is no longer involved in the campaign, how is she relevant to your story?
Or maybe the halfling-turned-kobold was an NPC with whom the PCs often had to deal? In that case, T having to deal with that NPC would be a fascinating roleplaying opportunity.
Or maybe when you said "shortly after" you meant "shortly BEFORE?" In THAT case, the story would indeed be funny.
I have a feeling I WOULD be amused by your story, if only I understood it.
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one of my most favourite moments was my very first PFRPG character. a gnome druid.
she was brilliant, she even had her own wolf pet, which she constantly tried to ride everywhere, but lacking a saddle and appropriate riding skills, failed most of the time.
well, we were doing the whole party-meets-in-tavern thing when a yell erupted from outside. running outside with the party, we see a horde of goblins running about with their goblin dogs.
seeing her hated enemy, my character was in overdrive, and rolling brilliantly, using a quaterstaff, and rolling a nat 20 and a 19 on the first hit.
well, being small, i couldnt cover the ground as fast, so hoping that i could luck it out, i successfully rolled a 17 on ride, and rode toward the only goblin mounted on a goblin dog.
just at that moment one of the players, who has a bad habit of playing music on his laptop during game sessions, started to play the song from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, it worked brilliantly as my character and the goblin stopped for a round or two to take measure of each other, and then charge, its shortpear vs my quaterstaff in a small sized jousting session of pure win.
knocking him off, he managed to grab me and drag me off the wolf, which then resulted in he and i pummelling each other with our non existant strength bonuses, and small sized fists of fury.
after about 17 rounds of combat, a lot of misses were involved, i finally managed to subdue the goblin, only to have my character look up and notice the entire town crowded around the small pit we were fighting in, cheering and exchanging money.
i managed to start a goblin fighting ring, where only bare fisted and with no armour could you fight, as long as you were small sized.
i brought commerce to the town, as quite a few years later, my gnome underwent a forcible retirement involving a very large tree and a very angry family of dire squirrels, my tiefling rogue character came back to the town, only to see that the town had prospered quite a bit and was now in the process of constructing their own small sized arena for their monthly, "Pint Sized Pummel Fights"
Peebo :D